1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method for transferring a message and related communication system thereof, and more particularly, to a method for transferring a message in a predetermined sending time and related communication system thereof.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Cell phones have become an essential electronic device in today's modern life. Communication can occur anytime and any place through the use of cell phones. Cell phones have dual uses, not only acting as normal telephones but also enabling messages to be sent between two cells. Nowadays, even e-mail can be transferred from one cell phone to another. This provides users with many communication choices.
Please refer to FIG. 1, which is a flow chart of a prior art process of sending a message from a first cell phone to a second cell phone. It comprises the following steps:
Step 100: The first cell phone prepares a message to be sent to the second cell phone.
Step 102: The first cell phone transfers the message to a service center.
Step 104: After the service center receives the message, the service center reads information from the message.
Step 106: The service center forwards the message to the second cell phone.
First of all, the first cell phone prepares a message (Step 100). As known by those skilled in the art, the message has to comprise information of destination (in this case, the destination is the second cell phone), the current time, and the data to be sent to the second cell phone.
As mentioned above, a message comprises certain information. Please refer to FIG. 2, which is a simplified diagram of a message according to the prior art. For the purposes of simple illustration, FIG. 2 only shows a part of the message. As shown in FIG. 2, the message comprises different parts. The first part of the message is called a transmission-protocol-first-octet (TP-FO). Another part of the message is called a transmission-protocol-validity-period (TP-VP). The last part of the message is the data as defined by the users.
Please note that the TP-VP part stores information of four different formats, which are: TP-VP not present format, TP-VP related format, TP-VP enhanced format, and TP-VP absolute format. The TP-VP absolute format in particular contains information regarding the absolute time, including seconds, minutes, dates, months, years, and the current time zone. Moreover, the TP-FO part is an 8-bit information, where two bits are utilized to tell the service center which format the information stored inside the TP-VP is.
Please refer to FIG. 1 again, where the first cell phone transfers the prepared message to a service center. Please note that the service center is provided by a telecom service provider. The service center can be regarded as a server, which works for forwarding messages (Step 102).
The service center (the server) receives the message, and reads the information, including the data, the current time, and the destination information, from the message (Step 104). Therefore, the service center can know where the message should be sent, and is then able to immediately forward the message to the second cell phone (Step 106).
In some instances, the message may not be transferred to the second cell phone successfully. For example, if the second cell phone is not turned on or has insufficient storage space to store the message, the message cannot be sent to the second cell phone. Therefore, the service center often comprises a report mechanism to tell the user of the first cell phone whether the message has been successfully transferred or not. Furthermore, in order to prevent from trying to send the message to an unavailable destination too many times, the service center also has a timeout mechanism. For example, the service center can only try to send the message in a predetermined time period. Through using the two above-mentioned mechanisms, the user is able to know whether the message has been transferred successfully or not.
The above-mentioned process of transferring a message has a problem, however. That is, the user cannot input a predetermined sending time to send the message. For example, the user may have to go to a place where the cell phone cannot be utilized, but still wishes to send a message to people at that time. The user may wish to send a message for a special occasion, such as a “Happy Birthday” message, but wants to arrange in advance the time the message should be sent. Therefore, if the above-mentioned process can support the mechanism of sending messages in a predetermined timing, the functions of cell phones and associated services can be more complete.